The music was a reaction to the 1980s flow of hip hop culture from
New York City and the
Los Angeles area, and can be considered a third
major American hip hop genre, after
East Coast hip hop and West Coast
hip hop . Many early
Southern rap artists released their music
independently or on mixtapes after encountering difficulty securing
record-label contracts in the 1990s. By the early 2000s, many
Southern artists had attained national success, and as the decade went
on, both mainstream and underground varieties of Southern hip-hop
became among the most popular and influential of the entire genre.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the American hip hop music market was
primarily dominated by artists from the East
Coast and West
Coast .
Los Angeles and
New York City were the two main cities where hip hop
was receiving widespread attention. In the 1980s, cities throughout
the
Southern United States began to catch on to the hip hop music
movement. The
Geto Boys , a hip hop group from
Houston , were among
the first hip hop artists from the
Southern United States to gain
widespread popularity. Southern hip hop's roots can be traced to the
success of Geto Boys'
Grip It! On That Other Level in 1989, the Rick
Rubin produced The
Geto Boys in 1990, and We Can\'t Be Stopped in
1991. After the
Geto Boys rose to stardom,
Houston became the center
for Southern hip hop.
Miami also played a major role in the rise of
Southern
Hip-hop during this time frame with successful acts like 2
Live Crew and other artists who relied heavily on the
Miami bass
sound. In the late 1980s, other rising rap groups such as
UGK from
Port Arthur, Texas , and
8Ball & MJG from
Memphis , moved to Houston
to further their musical careers.

By the 1990s,
Atlanta had become a controlling city in southern hip
hop music.
Hip hop groups such as
OutKast and
Goodie Mob played a huge
part in helping the South become a center for hip hop music. OutKast
became the first Southern artists to generate album sales like the
powerhouse rappers on the East and West coasts.

The most successful Southern independent labels during the
mid-to-late 90s came out of the cities of
Memphis and New Orleans.
Both scenes borrowed heavily from a production style first introduced
by way of the obscure late-1980s New York rap group The Showboys,
heavily sampling the beats from their song "Drag Rap (Trigger Man)."
By the turn of the century these scenes found mainstream success
through
Cash Money Records and
No Limit Records out of
New Orleans and
Hypnotize Minds out of Memphis, revolutionizing financial structures
and strategies for independent
Southern rap labels.

The height of Southern hip-hop was reached from 2002 through 2004. In
2002, Southern hip-hop artists accounted for 50 to 60 percent of the
singles on hip-hop music charts. On the week of December 13, 2003,
Southern urban artists, labels and producers accounted for six of the
top 10 slots on the
Billboard Hot 100 :
OutKast had two singles,
Ludacris ,
Kelis (produced by
The Neptunes ),
Beyoncé and
Chingy (on
Ludacris '
Disturbing Tha Peace label). In addition to this, from
October 2003 through December 2004, the number one position on the
Billboard Hot 100 pop chart was held by a Southern urban artist for 58
out of 62 weeks. This was capped by the week of December 11, 2004 when
seven out of the top ten songs on the chart were held by or featured
Southern urban artists. In 2004, Vibe magazine reported that Southern
artists accounted for 43.6% of the airplay on urban radio stations
(compared to 29.7% for the Midwest, 24.1% for the East
Coast and 2.5%
for the West coast).
Rich Boy from
Mobile, Alabama was successful in
2007 with his debut album.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, Atlanta's hip hop scene was
characterized by a local variant of Miami\'s electro-driven bass music
, with stars like
Kilo Ali , MC Shy-D, Raheem the Dream and DJ Smurf
(later
Mr. Collipark ). MC Shy-D is credited with bringing authentic
Bronx-style hip-hop to
Atlanta (and Miami), such as 1988's Shake it
produced by
DJ Toomp ; Jones was signed to controversial southern rap
label
Luke Records , run by
Luther Campbell aka "Uncle Luke". Arrested
Development won the Grammy in 1992 with "Tennessee ", while "Mr.
Wendal " the label eventually became the home to multi-platinum
selling artists such as
Toni Braxton , TLC ,
Ciara . It is also the
home of
So So Def Records , a label founded by
Jermaine Dupri in the
mid-1990s, that signed acts such as
Da Brat , Jagged Edge , Xscape and
Dem Franchise Boyz . The success of LaFace and SoSo Def led to Atlanta
as an established scene for record labels such as LaFace parent
company
Arista Records to set up satellite offices.

In 2009, the
New York Times noted that after 2000,
Atlanta moved
"from the margins to becoming hip-hop's center of gravity, part of a
larger shift in hip-hop innovation to the South." Producer Drumma Boy
called
Atlanta "the melting pot of the South". Producer
Fatboi called
the
Roland TR-808 ("808") synthesizer "central" to
Atlanta music's
versatility, used for snap , crunk , trap , and pop rap styles. The
same article named
Drumma Boy ,
Fatboi ,
Shawty Redd , Lex Luger and
Zaytoven the five "hottest producers driving the city".

Before the early 1990s, most
Southern hip hop was upbeat and fast,
like
Miami bass and crunk . In
Texas , a different approach of slowing
music down, rather than speeding it up, developed. It is unknown when
DJ Screw definitively created "screwed and chopped" music. Although
people associated with Screw have indicated any time between 1984 and
1991, Screw said he started slowing music down in 1990. In Tulsa,
Oklahoma Dj Dinero And Dj Z-Nasty helped popularize Chopped And
Screwed music in the Mid South. There is no debate, however, that DJ
Screw invented the music style. He discovered that dramatically
reducing the pitch of a record gave a mellow, heavy sound that
emphasized lyrics to the point of almost storytelling . After
experimenting with the sound for a while Screw started making full
length "Screw Tapes".

Between 1991 and 1992, there was a large increase in use of purple
drank in Texas.
Purple drank has been considered to be a major
influence in the making of and listening to chopped and screwed music
due to its perceived effect of slowing the brain down, giving slow,
mellow music its appeal. DJ Screw, however, repeatedly denounced the
claim that one has to use purple drank to enjoy screwed and chopped
music. Screw, a known user of purple drank, said he came up with
chopped and screwed music when high on marijuana .

As the spread of Southern Rap continued, its mainstream breakthrough
occurred in 2000. Rap duo
UGK made a high-profile guest appearance on
Jay-Z 's smash hit "Big Pimpin\' " and also appeared on Three 6 Mafia
's hit "Sippin\' on Some Syrup ." Both of these collaborations greatly
increased their reputation and helped fuel anticipation for their next
project . A song that originally appeared on the compilation album The
Day Hell Broke Loose 2, Mike Jones ' "Still Tippin\' ", achieved
mainstream success in 2004 leading to local
Houston rap label
Swishahouse signing a national distribution deal with
Asylum Records .
Jones released his major label debut,
Who Is Mike Jones? , on
Swishahouse/Warner Bros. in April 2005; the album was certified
platinum that June.
Paul Wall 's major label debut, The Peoples Champ
, on Swishahouse/Atlantic , was released in September 2005, eventually
topping the
Billboard 200 . Before embarking on his rap career and
while still at school, Wall had worked in the
Swishahouse office.
Some notable
Texas artists include:

New Orleans , with its rich history of African American musical
traditions, has occupied a central place in the history of hip-hop in
Louisiana , although several notable rap artists have emerged from
other cities like Baton Rouge and Shreveport /Bossier . Building on a
decade of local activity, rappers and DJs in
New Orleans during the
early 1990s created a new local style of hip-hop that was eventually
christened "bounce." While the style remained regionally limited, the
bounce scene helped support the growth of a local industry. However,
the city’s distance from hip-hop’s initial centers of activity
(New York and later Los Angeles) meant that it would take a
significant amount of time for New Orleans-based rappers, producers,
and record labels to penetrate the commercial mainstream. Building on
the early foundation, several independent record labels, including No
Limit and Cash Money , captured national audiences in the late 1990s
and helped establish
New Orleans as one of the centers of the "Dirty
South" style. New generations of artists and companies emerged in the
early twenty-first century, but many of those suffered a major setback
in the form of
Hurricane Katrina -related disruption.

Locally established record labels and producers were responsible for
some of the earliest rap recordings to come out of New Orleans. These
included singles by Parlez (on Senator Jones’s Superdome label) and
Jones and Taylor Experience (on Soulin’ Records), among others. New
York Incorporated, a group of several DJs and rappers led by
transplanted New Yorker Denny Dee, was one of the first devoted
exclusively to hip-hop. It included Byron Thomas and Mia Young, who
would go on to later fame as
Mannie Fresh and
Mia X , respectively.
Other groups from this period included Rockers Revenge and the Ninja
Crew (composed of rappers Gregory D, Sporty T and DJ Baby T), who
released a single in 1986 on the Miami-based 4-Sight label.

After Ninja Crew disbanded, Gregory D partnered with
Mannie Fresh to
form a duo that would prove to be one of the most prolific rap groups
of the late 1980s. The pair released records on the Yo! Label, based
in Dallas,
Texas , and the Los Angeles-based D the label sold millions
of copies of subsequent releases by
Master P , his brothers C-Murder
and
Silkk the Shocker ,
Mia X and, later,
Mystikal . Other artists on
the roster included Big Ed , Big Ramp , C-Loc ,
Choppa , Curren ,
D.I.G. , Fiend ,
Full Blooded ,
Gambino Family (group) , Ghetto
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The first major rap artists out of Alabama was southern rap duo Dirty
from
Montgomery, Alabama . They sold well regionally before signing
with
Universal Records . Their major label debut, Keep It Pimp
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